“People tend in many economies to trust their business leaders more than their governments” – told ICC Secretary General John Denton The Checkpoints.
In his interview with Elene Kvanchilashvili, Denton spoke about the necessity to have close cooperation and communication of authorities and policy makers with the business community to effectively fight COVID-19. The logic here is that if businesses have sufficient and accurate information then they are enabled to spread it among their employees and help to utilize it more effectively.
In response to this need, ICC created regional action groups. “What we do is that we crowd in all the voices of the business community in those regions; identify what they need, and then we take it to global and regional policy makers and the leaders” – Denton explained.
ICC Secretary General says it is hard for leaders not to play the same cards as they did after 2008 Global Financial Crisis as they do not clearly see the differences between the two crises. “ICC’s first job was to draw the attention of global policy makers – G20 and so forth – that no, the play box that you use for the global financial crisis would not be sufficient for this real economy crisis. The key thing here is to get support to SMEs and macro-SMEs globally to enable them to keep functioning and keep employing people” – said Denton.
John Denton became Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in 2018. He is a global business leader and international advisor on policy and a legal expert on international trade and investment. Denton serves on the Board of leading global infrastructure group IFM Investors and is Chair of the Asia Pacific Advisory Council of Veracity WorldWide.
ICC is the institutional representative of more than 45 million companies in over 100 countries. Its mission is to make business work for everyone, every day, everywhere.
